Howl by Allen Ginsberg

[ sorry for the extended absence folks, had a technical issue late last year but not the spoons to get it fixed. the bot will be running again soon. ]

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

I

For Carl Solomon

Howl

San Francisco, 1955-56

I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

O skinny legions run outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse

I’m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I’m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I’m with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss

I’m with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I’m with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I’m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor

I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries

I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am

III

They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!